October 23, 2003
Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/393-9011)
RELEASE: 03-344
NASA SCIENTISTS DIVES INTO PERFECT SPACE STORM
Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history's most massive
space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its intensity and
the probability that what occurred on Earth and in the heavens almost
a century-and-a-half ago could happen again.
In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other
unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2,
1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of
Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred.
Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe
spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern
Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions
near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana
and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.
"Remarkably, science has documented solar events a hundred times more
intense," said Dr. Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But none of them
interacted with the Earth in such a violent manner. What happened in
1859 was a combination of several events that occurred on the Sun at
the same time. If they took place separately they would be somewhat
notable events. But together they create the most potent disruption
of Earth's ionosphere in recorded history. What they generated was
the perfect space storm," he said.
To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first begin to
understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma physicists like
Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million kilometers (869,919
miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire
solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk.
The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion
kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons
of TNT exploding each and every second.
But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close
inspection of the Sun's surface reveals a turbulent tangle of
magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma dappled
by dark, roving sunspots.
Every once in a while -- exactly when scientists cannot predict -- an
event occurs on the surface of the Sun that releases a tremendous
amount of energy in the form of a solar flare or a coronal mass
ejection, an explosive burst of very hot, electrified gases with a
mass that can surpass that of Mount Everest.
What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150
million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary
space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar
observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's
surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic
fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic
energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a
solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were
observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar
flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun
produced at the region of the flare actually doubled.
"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of
magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said
Tsurutani. "These things actually fire out from the Sun radially, so
not all of them head toward the Earth. But those that do usually take
three to four days to reach Earth. This one took all of 17 hours and
40 minutes," he noted.
Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the
magnetic fields contained within its charged particles were extremely
intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That
meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed
Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate
into Earth's upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is
one heck of a light show and more -- including potential disruptions
of electrical grids and communications systems.
Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and
society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar
storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites,
disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service
throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from
cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power
grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the
perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power
grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and
loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of
dollars.
"The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space storm
happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people it could,
and it could very well be even more intense than what transpired in
1859. As for when, we simply do not know," he said.
To research this perfect space storm, Tsurutani and co-writers Drs.
Walter Gonzalez, of the Brazilian National Space Institute, and
Gurbax Lakhina and Sobhana Alex, of the India Institute of
Geomagnetism, used previously reported ground, solar and auroral
observations, and recently re-discovered ground-based magnetic-field
data from Colaba Observatory in India. The findings were published in
a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
For more information on the Internet, visit:
http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/
http://www.nasa.gov
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